


Eternal

by g33kg1rl



Series: Eternal [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bisexual Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester Actually Deals With Feelings, Dean Winchester Has Realizations, Dean Winchester Has a Sexuality Crisis, Dean Winchester Realizes Feelings For Castiel, Destiel - Freeform, Destiel is canon, Feelings Realization, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, Hurt Dean Winchester, I Will Go Down With This Ship, I can't believe it happened, M/M, POV Dean Winchester, So much sobbing, The fallout of e18, because what the hell happened to 19's emotions?, post 15x18, the heart-to-heart we deserved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:01:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27540457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/g33kg1rl/pseuds/g33kg1rl
Summary: The last time Cass died, it had destroyed him. Weeks of drinking, locking himself away in the bunker binging shows and eating crap when he even bothered to eat at all. It had left him a wreck. But a wreck who didn’t know.Now, there wasn't any hope left. He was seconds away from shattering, and Sam wasn't any better. There was nothing to hold them together—no tape, no glue strong enough to piece together their losses.He just never thought that at the end of the world, Cass wouldn't be there.//Filling in a moment we should have gotten in some form in 15x19.  Or: Dean Winchester actually considers his emotions.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Series: Eternal [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019734
Comments: 26
Kudos: 184





	Eternal

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this after 15x19 and was flabbergasted by the lack of emotions. It felt so rushed and like they shoved two or three episodes into one. This is a scene we SHOULD have gotten in regards to the fall out of what happened at the end of 15x18. 
> 
> This was the scene we deserved to have gotten in 19.

Dean never thought this would be part of his ending. He just never thought about the 'what if' scenario. This situation could have been some drinking game he and Sam played after too much whiskey and good burgers. But never reality. This wasn't supposed to be who was left standing—and who wasn't left. 

  
He sat in silence for hours. He barely registered the noises of Sam and Jack returning, he forced himself to pull it together, but he wasn't all the way there. He could fake it, but behind closed doors, he couldn't make it. Dean sat in the kitchen with Sam, and it occurred to him, in some twisted, fucked up realization that brought this whole fucking apocalypse in perspective—as much as he missed Jody and the girls; as much as he grieved Sam telling him Charlie and Donna disappeared; as much as he railed against the loss of Bobby and so many others; it was Sam's loss of Eileen and his loss of Cass that was breaking him. 

  
Who fucking knew? 

  
He bit his cheek to keep what little tears remained locked away. His head thumped back against the wall and he squeezed his eyes shut, taking slow, measured breathes that threatened to make a run for it and drag a choking sob from deep in his gut. 

  
He hated himself. 

  
He knew without a doubt, in that very moment, as much as it sucked to lose the others (and he would grieve in his own time for them), he hated himself for knowing without a doubt, he would survive without them. 

  
He didn't know if he could say the same without Cass. 

  
The last time Cass died, it had destroyed him. Weeks of drinking, locking himself away in the bunker binging shows and eating crap when he even bothered to eat at all. It had left him a wreck. But a wreck who didn’t know.

  
Now, there wasn't any hope left. He was seconds away from shattering, and Sam wasn't any better. There was nothing to hold them together—no tape, no glue strong enough to piece together their losses. 

  
Dean didn't even think having Sam still at his side could keep his broken pieces balanced into this human shape he wore. 

  
He cleared his throat and regretted it, feeling the pressure building behind his eyes again.

  
He just never thought that at the end of the world, Cass wouldn't be there. All their fights, their squabbles, his inability to just fucking say what he actually meant... he just never thought Cass wouldn't be there at his elbow, ready and willing to support him no matter what happened. He actually thought on some level he would go down fighting with him. Together. Him, Sam, Jack, and Cass, they would go down like the four musketeers in a blaze of fire. 

  
But he was gone. 

  
Dean didn't know what to think. He lingered on the loss most of all, but there, niggling off to the right in his mind, burning hot bright like angel grace, a tear-filled and smiling 'I love you.' It burned him. It hurt so much even as he held onto it, trying so hard to remember how he said it, clinging to every word he never knew he wanted to hear. 

  
It hurt because he knew it was true. He could see it, looking back. He felt it, thinking back on every mistake he or Cass took—it all stemmed back to those words, words that sat pinned down deep inside, an emotion Castiel carried within him without ever having said it aloud—Dean knew now. 

  
Dean felt like poison. He felt like he was nothing more than Death walking the world. Anyone who got close to him died—and Cass was just another casualty. But it hurt so much more. Cass loving him had literally killed him, and Dean raised his hands to his face, hiding himself as his face twisted in agony. 

  
He didn't know. He just didn't know how he felt because there wasn't enough time. On the best of days he needed time to process, to try and sift through years of toxic masculinity beaten into him from this life he lived before he could admit what he really wanted. He knew he could have said Cass was family—but that wasn't what Cass had said to him... had meant as he stood there crying—

  
Shit, had he ever seen Cass cry? He couldn't remember. He honestly couldn't remember ever seeing the angel cry. 

  
But he had cried for Dean. 

  
"Dean?"

  
Dean gasped in a breath, just trying to breathe. Was he having a fucking panic attack? He grit his teeth and growled in his throat, sniffing leaning forward, elbows on his knees as he pulled his hands away, trying to wipe the tears away as discretely as possible to hide them from Sam. 

  
Sam wasn't even looking at him, just staring at his hands, shoulders slumped and face long. 

  
"Yeah?"

"I feel like I'm cursed." he husked out, voice sounding wet and ready to crack open like a dam. 

  
Dean felt the same.

  
"I... back... with Jes... I was... I was ready to propose." Sam said, inhaling shakily, and Dean watched his brother's face crumple, "I was thinking about asking Eileen-" and he couldn't finish, falling forward, hands in his hair, and tears dripping off his nose. 

“Sammy…” Dean closed his eyes, his lip trembling—actually fucking trembling—because he knew. 

  
He felt it, pressing on his tongue, heady and rich like Indian spices, but Dean didn't know if he could say it. He didn't know if he felt brave enough to turn to his brother and tell him exactly how Cass was able to sacrifice himself. He knew Jack had a better inkling as to how that deal with the Empty worked, but Sam... he had been able to pass it off as just sacrificing himself to save him... 

  
And in less than a split second that secret felt too heavy to sit unmoving in his chest. He turned away, turned as far away from his brother as he could and choked on his next breath, hiccuping in breathes all over again. God, he hated crying. A man-tear was one thing, but this, the ugly, suffocating sobs that had left him a hollow wreck in the dungeon after Cass died, he didn't think he could survive this secret. 

  
Not at the end of the world. 

  
"He loved me." he whispered out past a throat so tight it hurt to get the words out. And the words brought about a fresh rush of hot tears that slashed down his cheeks and across his throat, bleeding him out. “He died because he loved me.” He hid his face, pressed his head back into the wall and all he could see was Cass saying it over and over in his mind. What had started as a numbness that forced him to function, processing it strangled him. Getting exactly what he had needed to hear his entire life declared in less than three minutes—Dean wanted to take it all back if it meant Cass would be alive because they went down fighting together. He hadn't even begun to deal with the fact he didn't know how he felt about knowing his best friend in the entire world had been in love with him—let alone how he felt about reciprocating it. 

  
Sam didn't say anything at first. They both had to of sat there for another forty minutes before they calmed down enough to process, eyes feeling puffy and scratchy. 

  
"I know he did." Sam's voice broke the numbing hum of the refrigerators. 

  
"Not like that--"

  
"Dean, I think I've known he's been in love with you for the last nine years."

  
Dean jerked his head around to look at his little brother, his eyes unable to focus because they fucking hurt from fucking crying all day. "What?"

  
Sam wiped his cheeks and sniffed, pushing his hair away from his red eyes and he turned to look at Dean, a weariness in the set of his shoulders saying it all. "Dude, even if I had told you, you weren't ready to know. Are you even ready now?" 

  
He wanted to argue, opened his mouth to argue, but nothing came out, because despite the bone-weary misery, Dean felt that immediate urge to deny he would like a guy. A knee-jerk, defensive response... and yet, he had had time to think about it before this very subject had been brought up. 

  
He wasn't gay. He just... he knew he wasn't. But, it felt like this subject was a little skewed, like he hadn't really thought about it long enough to really understand his own sexuality. This wasn't exactly the time for it, but... he liked women. He did. The curves, the softness of them, the shape and smell of them.... 

But he couldn't deny that those few times he had run into a guy that he had thought was good-looking, he’d get a little... well... silly. He tended to get a little twittery around them, hanging on their every word, chumming it up with them, leaning in close—

Shit. 

He didn't know if he was ready for something like that. 

The idea of pushing Cass to the bed--unclothed, hard--it unsettled something deep in his core that recoiled at the idea, even if his dick did stir at the image. There was just too much baggage. Too much ingrained enforced-machoism to unpack and dig through to really know whatever the hell this was right now. It was too much. He gasped for a breath, overwhelmed and struggling to just understand what he felt. He didn't want Cass dead, but he didn't know yet if hitting his knees for the guy was something he wanted either. He just wanted Cass there, all the time. His companion till the end. Maybe the idea of kissing wasn't so bad.... 

  
It was Dean's turn to not talk for a while, focusing on something other than the fact Cass was gone—as was the whole fucking world apparently. He thought about it, really thought about what it was he was realizing. 

  
"Maybe like, 70/30? Or, 80/20...." the words clawed their way out of his throat.

  
Sam looked at him, brows furrowed in that same 'what the fuck are you talking about?' look of his, eyes watery again but thankfully not running down his face yet. "What?"

  
Dean looked away, his face feeling hot, his neck feeling hot, his head feeling dizzy and like everything was so messed up. He snorted, as close to a laugh as he was ever going to get right now. He rubbed his scratchy eyes. "I... I feel like...." Man, this was hard for some reason. He cleared his throat, struggling a little to just say what he was feeling. "I'm straight, okay? But, like, maybe like, 20% of me... I, maybe I do-" he waved his hand in the air, inhaling shakily. "I don't know, man." He hid his face, chickening out. 

  
Sam hummed. "For the right guy." He simplified, and Dean nodded, but refused to look at him, hating how that single statement clicked something into place inside of him that made him feel like there was a part of himself he hadn't known wasn't placed just right on the puzzle board of his life. 

  
Was this just another example of Chuck forcing him into a direction in life that hadn’t been who he was? What if…

  
They were quiet for a minute more, the hum of the refrigerator taking up dominance once more, before Sam cleared his throat again, and Dean's shoulder's stiffened. 

  
"Do you think... with Cass..."

  
Dean caught his breath, his heart speeding up to a throb in his throat. 

  
No? 

  
Maybe? 

  
There was a part of him that didn't think he would be able to pull Cass' clothes off and push him into bed. 

  
But another part of him whispered he just realized he may like guys a little more than he had known and just repressed it down so deep he hadn't allowed himself to absorb what he might like. It gave him a headache. He was too old for this shit. 

  
He didn’t want to think about it. But, he owed it to himself. He didn’t think about the sex because he was in no way ready for something like that—but he thought about Cass himself. Cass and how he made him feel, Cass and his loyalty, Cass and his lack of understanding human sarcasm. It took years for Cass to understand humanity, to grow to love it contrary to the other angels, to see humanity’s beauty and flaws and still think they were worthy of being saved. He thought about who Cass had become, and who he was to him.

  
And that just brought his face back to him, tears in his eyes, telling him how he had come to love the world because of him. 

  
He scrubbed his hands through his hair, focusing on just breathing. 

  
He was nowhere ready to admit anything.

  
Yet, end of the world with only a handful of people to choose to stay on the island—Cass would have been in his top three to stay at his side. Suddenly, that scenario of living the domestic life with Cass after the world burned around them with Sam and Eileen across the street, Jack living down the hall…

  
He would have been happy. 

  
Dean drags his hands down his face and they slapped onto his thighs, his eyes getting lost in the ceiling of the kitchen. 

  
"Yeah.... I think so." And his chest hurt because something welled up from deep within, a throbbing pressure that pushed at his ribcage, pounding against his heart, this need to scream, like a swarm of bees humming through his veins at that small admission; because admitting it, saying it, he understood now why Cass had said it was the happiest moment of his life. It was one thing to know it, but it was another thing to declare it aloud; something honest and raw. 

  
Dean couldn't imagine having an apple-pie life. He had tried it. He had enjoyed it, but it had never quite fit; he hadn’t quite fit into that life no matter how much he had wanted it. Even while living it, it remained just that, a dream. He could definitely imagine it for Sammy—mortgage, wife, kids running around in the backyard, a fucking dog sitting on the sofa no matter how many times Eileen told it to get down. But never for himself. 

  
But imagining growing old and crotchety with Cass; puttering about the kitchen, making himself burgers under the delusion that he would make it to old age where he was gray and no longer able to hunt but maybe do what Bobby did and help younger hunters…. Cass was just there. He never would have thought otherwise. Even recently with the fights they’ve had, the words they threw at each other, the accusations, Dean never once thought Cass would ever leave. Cass was a fixture. Cass was eternal. Cass was just supposed to be there with him till the end. 

That image, that fantasy of growing old with the angel felt like truth-of-truths crowding into his soul and filling him to bursting because he knew, no matter what lie he could have told himself, he would have been happy growing old like that. Growing old with Cass. 

  
They would have been happy.

  
Dean clenched his jaw and blinked his eyes quickly. That heaviness, watching Cass being dragged back into the Empty... it hurt so much more now. 

  
He cursed and bowed his head, shoulders shaking, and it was his turn to have tears drip down his nose. 

  
They would have been happy. 

  
"Dean..."

  
"I could have loved him, Sammy." He choked out. “I think I’ve loved him and didn’t even know it.”

  
And the pair sat together, broken under an uncaring God’s final ending. 

  
//

  
Eventually though, that fire sputtered back to life, reigniting the fight in their souls, escaping the blackness of despair the last several hours had ripped into them. Fight flared back to life in their chests, and the determined set of their shoulders made the loading of shotguns, the sharping of knives, and the prepping of spells all the more focused and easy. 

  
"We'll keep fighting till our last breath." Dean resolved, packing up the car, Sam at his side and Jack wiping his just as red eyes with a nod. "We'll fix the world, we'll kill Chuck, and after wards, after we have our people back, we're going to eat some damn taquitos with Cass and Eileen and whoever else is close enough to join us, and we're going to throw back some shots, sing some bad karaoke, and we’ll do it because we'll be free, and for the first time in our screwed up lives, we'll decide what makes us happy." 

  
Jack sniffled, looking so small as he looked to Dean, "But, what if the Empty won't-"

  
Dean leveled a look on the kid, fists at his sides. "I've gone to Hell, Purgatory, and Reno and back, all with Cass, and by God, if I have to go to the Empty to drag his ass out, I will do it and we'll leave together, because there is nothing in this universe that can stop me." 

  
And in that moment, Dean felt like he could feel the Universe tremble in fear at the very idea of Dean Winchester on a mission. 

  
Because even the Universe knew, there wasn't a single door Dean Winchester wouldn't kick down to get what he wanted. 

//

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .... I wrote this last week and honestly chickened out from posting it right away because in a way, I thought we would get this scene in s15e19. I REALLY thought we would get a version of this in canon.
> 
> I'm with ya'll, 19 left me underwhelmed and a little floored at how... um... dues ex machina it was...((AKA BAD)).... and also, it had nothing of the trademark Winchester emotional roller coaster. I just finished watching it an hour ago, I'm going to re-watch it in the morning so I can see how I feel about it, really analyze it, and see what I think; but as of right now; it just felt like it was rushed, it had no emotion, and they just wanted to wrap this episode up as quickly as possible so they could get to episode 20. It was hands-down the worst episode of the season, and I'd daresay the series... but me being a stupid optimist, I'm holding out some hope for next week. I can see what they were trying to say by making it such an anticlimatic ending to Chuck, but... well... that's another rant for another time.
> 
> .............. Man, I wasn't expecting 19 to be what it was..... so underwhelming.
> 
> (though my theory that Jack would become the new God became reality, so in a sick way I'm patting myself on the back for calling that way back in season 14.)
> 
> Anyway, back to work.
> 
> In regards to this piece: again, I REALLY thought we were going to get some version of this - but definitely not as sappy as what I wrote. But now, I'm almost clinging to this and other fics people have written that have something similar. (the only part of 15x19 that I did give a small golf-clap to was Dean PASSED OUT DRUNK on a freaking WHISKEY BOTTLE on the FLOOR because you know he drank himself stupid after 15x18 and what happened to Cass; having not said a single word to Sam as to what Cass told him, and so he'd internalizing it all and not dealing in a healthy way.... THAT was the part that felt in character.) So, I wrote this up on Friday last week (after sobbing for 2 1/2 hours after episode 18, not getting to sleep till 4am, going to work at 9am, and then being forced to be a functioning adult for 9 hours). ((also.. don't tell work, but I maybe wrote this while on the clock, out on the floor, and emailed it to myself because I COULDN'T DEAL 18 and all the emotions.))
> 
> I do have more written, and I may just go ahead and flesh it out and post it before 15x20 simply because I need to have hope that Dean kicks some doors down to get Cass back.
> 
> And kicking down doors I do have Dean doing. So yeah. if I can figure out the rest of it, I'll post it. And If people liked this emotional sappy 15x18 depression-filled ramble, let me know! I'm insecure and need validation that I don't suck, and it may motivate me to write more about Dean defying God, gods, and Death to get Cass out through a backdoor, through good-old Winchester deal-making, and being the awkward newly-discovered-bi-disaster that he is.
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> ~Melissa the Damgel
> 
> (P.S. Oh! I also wanted to clear something up: the reason I have Dean saying "70/30. Or, 80/20?" is because that's how I describe my bi-sexuality, because I say that and people seem to understand what I'm trying to say. As I was writing this and I got to that portion, it dawned on me that Dean might be more comfortable explaining his sexual crisis in those terms as well... breaking it down into a number that he could see and look at and point at and go, "Yeah, see, I like women more, but... that other number there, it's there, I just... it's smaller and I didn't know it was there for a while.")

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where my original note went.. so here's this just to clear something up:
> 
> I used the "70/30...or 80/20" reference because that's how I once tried to describe my bisexualness to someone. I said that and it was like it clicked and they understood what I was trying to say; and as I was writing this chapter, it dawned on me that Dean Winchester, a man who is either in extreme denial, or has buried that portion of himself down so far he has never truly asked himself what he wants or what he likes.... that terminology seemed to fit for him. It just felt like something Dean would say to establish this portion of his life as still valid.... even if this other side sneaked up on him. 
> 
> I personally do think Dean is in denial in many ways about his bisexuality; so to be confronted as he was at the end of 18 without a way to "argue" about it because it was such a fast exchange and ended without closure, all Dean has left is to confront it and ask himself what he feels.... And that's why I felt like we never got that same closure in 15x19 by not having this scene. We got at least a little taste of Dean still shutting down and not telling Sam what Cass told him; and then Sam finding him passed out drunk under the table sleeping on a whiskey bottle as the only indication he wasn't handling it well. But we didn't get THAT MOMENT.... with Dean maybe standing in the doorway of the dungeon, just clearly remembering that moment... we didn't see him hang his jacket up with the bloody hand print and maybe it's hanging on the back of his door where he can stare at it from his bed but anyone entering can't see it.... we didn't a moment to know that Dean regretted anything... and I did appreciate Dean demanding Chuck bring Cass back. but it was so quickly brushed over in 19 that I needed this scene. I needed that release of "omg he said it" and wanting to see Dean's reaction.... 
> 
> 15x19 was a mess, but i feel like the reason it was a mess had nothing to do with the plot or idea for that episode... it had everything to do with the lack of emotional reactions to what just happened. 
> 
> anyway. thank you and I hope you enjoyed! if you liked, I do love me kudos and comments (I'm an insecure ball of anxiety half the time as is with my writing; so kind words are always appreciated!)
> 
> ~Melissa the Damgel


End file.
